Ramona's parents were Holocaust survivors who fled their homeland and settle in Melbourne. As a child, Koval learned little abouth their lives but she always suspected that the man who raised her was not her biological father. One day in the 1990's long after her mother's death, she decides she must know the truth. A phone call leads to a photograph in the mail, then tea with strangers.

Before long Koval is interrogating a nursing-home patient, meeting a horse whisperer in tropical Queensland, journeying to rural Poland, learning othe languages and dealing with Kafkaesque bureaucracy, all in the hope of finding an answer.